Dylann Roof, the man arrested after a shooting dead nine people in an historically black South Carolina church on Wednesday, wanted to start a civil war and bring back segregation, friends claim.

The 21-year-old is pictured on his Facebook profile wearing a jacket bearing flags from apartheid-era South Africa and what was once white-rule Rhodesia.

He also has a criminal record and in April received a gun for his 21st birthday.

Since his arrest in North Carolina, 250 miles north of the targeted church, friends have spoken out to paint a picture of a demonic character who fantasized about massacres so openly that people thought he was joking.

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Dylann Roof pictured on his way to court Thursday afternoon after being apprehended

Roof was remembered by some as a former skateboarder with long blond hair and had repeated 9th grade

Arrested: Authorities caught up with alleged racist Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof in Shelby, North Carolina, over 200 miles from the carnage he allegedly left behind, before noon on Thursday

Mug shot: This is Roof pictured shortly after he was detained in connection with the Charleston attack

'He flat out told us he was going to do this stuff,' his friend Christon Scriven told the New York Daily News. But, he said, 'He’s weird. You don’t know when to take him seriously and when not to.'

His roommate Dalton Tyler told ABC News: 'He was big into segregation and other stuff. He said he wanted to start a civil war. He said he was going to do something like that and then kill himself.'

The statements were dismissed as another example of Roof's 'deadpan sense of humor'.

But police believe they were ominous warnings of a premeditated attack on African Americans.

According to classmates, Roof is a frequent abuser of prescription drugs.

He flat out told us he was going to do this stuff

Roof's friend Christon Scriven

Court records from Lexington, North Carolina - where he has been living in a trailer park - reveal he was arrested twice this year on charges of trespassing and drug possession.

In the hours after the bloodbath, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights group that tracks hate organizations and extremists, said it was not aware of Roof before the rampage.

Some friends said they did not know him to be racist.

'I never thought he'd do something like this,' said high school friend Antonio Metze, 19. 'He had black friends.'

A young man with a blunt sugar-bowl haircut, Roof used to skateboard in a Lexington suburb in South Carolina when he was younger and had long hair then.

Childhood friend Joey Meek had seen him as recently as Tuesday, said Meek's mother, Kimberly Konzny. She said she didn't know why he was in Charleston and was not aware of his being involved in any church groups or saying anything racist.

Dylann Roof, the man police say went on a shooting rampage in an historically black South Carolina church murdering nine people Wednesday, has been pictured wearing a jacket bearing flags from apartheid-era South Africa and what was once white-rule Rhodesia

A photo that appears to show Roof sitting on the hood of the black Hyundai seen in surveillance footage, the one in which he allegedly fled from the scene Wednesday, shows a novelty plate on the front bumper

Classmate: A woman claiming to have been a classmate of Roof's called him quiet but also, the type person who might 'blow up some ish'

'I don't know what was going through his head,' Konzny said. 'He was a really sweet kid. He was quiet. He only had a few friends.'

Joey Meek alerted the FBI after he and his mother instantly recognized Roof in a surveillance camera image that was widely circulated after the shooting.

In the image, Roof had the same stained sweatshirt he wore while playing Xbox video games in their home recently, Konzny said. It was stained because he had worked at a landscaping and pest control business, she said.

Roof attended ninth grade at White Knoll High during the 2008-09 school year and went there for the first half of the following academic year, district spokeswoman Mary Beth Hill said. The school system gave no reason for Roof's departure and said it had no record of him attending any other schools in the district.

According to CBS News, school records show that between fourth and ninth grade, Roof attended six different schools, and repeated the ninth grade.

SYMBOLS OF HATE: THE MEANING BEHIND THE FLAGS ROOF WORE

In Roof's Facebook profile picture, he wears a jacket with two flag sewn into the chest: that of apartheid-era South Africa and white-rule Rhodesia.

His black Hyundai bore novelty license plates with the Confederate states flags.

SOUTH AFRICA'S APARTHEID-ERA FLAG

After the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa adopted a new national flag.

The previous flag has since been adopted by white supremacists as a symbol of racial hatred.

Symbol of hate: After the end of apartheid, South Africa adopted a new national flag in 1994 and the previous flag has since been adopted by white supremacists as a symbol of racial hatred

RHODESIA'S WHITE-RULE-ERA FLAG

Rhodesia was an unrecognized state in southern Africa that comprised the country now known as Zimbabwe.

It was ruled by whites until 1979, when the racist system was formally overturned.

Like the apartheid-era flag, Rhodesia's has been used as a symbol of white supremacy.

Another flag on Roof's jacket appeared to be of white-rule Rhodesia, what is now Zimbabwe

CONFEDERATE FLAGS

The Confederate States of America were was an unrecognized coalition of states between 1861 and 1865.

They ruled themselves independence of Abraham Lincoln's America and supported slavery, a major source of income for the confederacy.

Today, the flags are seen as a symbol of racism. There is a small yet relatively powerful community of people who insist the confederacy is legitimate.

Roof's bumper proudly displays this novelty plate in celebration of the slave-holding Confederate states

Previous offense: Dylann Roof was arrested in April on a trespassing charge in Lexington Count

The February arrest was prompted when employees at the Columbiana Centre mall told authorities Roof was 'out-of-the-ordinary questions' that made them uneasy, the New York Times reports.

Mullins said White Knoll High had 'a lot of preps, a little bit of gang members, and a lot of outcasts' but that Roof—despite his uncle's assertion his nephew was 'too introverted'—was not one of those outcasts.

'I never heard him say anything, but just he had that kind of Southern pride, I guess some would say. Strong conservative beliefs,' he said.

'He made a lot of racist jokes, but you don't really take them seriously like that. You don't really think of it like that.'

Speaking to Daily Mail Online former neighbor John Albert Walker recalled: 'I remember him as a nice little white kid, eight or nine years old, playing out in the yard or on the street. As I would drive by I'd wave to the kids out in the yard.

'I knew his sister. She'd come and rake my yard. His sister was very helpful, she must have been 11 or 12 at that point. They were helpful kids, nice little kids.

'I find what's happened astounding - that somebody would do something like that. I'm shocked. I knew [his uncle] Carson well enough to have a beer with.

'He and his sister [Dylann's mother Amelia] seemed not to be anywhere near racist or discriminatory. They seemed like really nice people.'

He added: 'The Redbank area is pretty good that way other than that the Grand Dragon of the Klu Klux Klan, Horace King, lived between the Redbank and Fairfield areas in Lexington.

'I don't know if the KKK is still active there.'

A mannhunt is underway for Dylann Roof, the 21-year-old named as the suspect who murdered nine parishioners in a South Carolina church

Mr Walker described the area as 'pretty mixed race.' He said: 'There are people of Mexican descent, Anglo descent, Asian…most of the people that live here are people who work at the University as either a professor or something.'

Reflecting on Dylann's actions he said: 'I just don't know what could have happened with him.'

Another woman claiming via Twitter to be former a classmate of Roof's wrote Thursday:

'Dylann use to be a super emo, with long blonde hair and he was pretty quiet,' Kimberly Taylor tweeted. 'I always said he look like the cry type to blow some ish up'

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Another classmate of Roof's, Adam Martin, told the Daily Beast that the accused mass killer wasn't bullied at their school.

'It wasn't like he got picked on. The school we went to...is so diverse he just couldn't have gotten picked on,' he said. 'Everyone is so different.'

A witness to Wednesday's massacre said Roof said before the shooting: 'I have to do it...You rape our women and you're taking over the country.'

On Wednesday, he allegedly entered the church and joined the group before suddenly opening fire an hour later. One survivor recounted how he reloaded his gun five times as he picked off his victims - killing three females and six males, including the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who is also a South Carolina state senator.

Pinckney's cousin told NBC News that one of the survivors told her they had urged Roof to stop.

A Charleston police officer searches for a shooting suspect outside the Emanuel AME Church, in downtown Charleston, S.C. on Wednesday

Manhunt: A huge manhunt ensued with officers wearing bullet-proof vests and carrying guns. Roof was apprehended Thursday before noon some 250 miles away

Roof spared one woman so she could 'tell the world what happened', eye witnesses recounted, while a five-year-old girl also survived the attack after her grandmother told her to play dead.

Police released photographs from surveillance video Thursday morning of the suspect and a dark colored sedan that may have been the getaway vehicle.

'This is a very dangerous individual,' Police Chief Greg Mullen said. 'We want to identify this individual and arrest him before he hurts anyone else.'

The suspect stayed for nearly an hour at the prayer meeting Wednesday night before shooting the victims - six females and three males, Mullen said.

Emanuel AME Church's pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was among those killed.

Pinckney, 41, was a married father of two who was elected to the state House at age 23, making him the youngest member of the House at the time.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office have launched a hate crime investigation into the mass shooting.

Getaway vehicle: The suspect was pictured leaving the church in a black four door sedan which has a distinctive license plate

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies have joined the investigation, Mullen said.

The killer is believed to have entered the church around 8pm before taking part in the prayer group for about an hour, police said.

Although it is a black church, it would not be surprising to see a white person - or a person of any other race - attending a gathering there, Charleston's NAACP President Dot Scott told CNN on Thursday.

Speaking in the NBC interview, Pinckney's cousin said Roof had specifically asked for the reverend before sitting beside him throughout the meeting.

The Reverend Norvel Goff, a presiding elder for the African Methodist Episcopal Church, told the Washington Post that the suspect 'walked in, from my understanding, not so much as a participant, but as a brief observer who then stood up and then started shooting'.

Police received the first call about the shooting shortly after 9pm.

Victim: The Reverend Clementa Pinckney, left and right, has been confirmed as one of the dead who was killed in the massacre

Local ministers comfort each other by holding hands and praying near the site of the mass shooting at a black church in South Carolina

Scene of horror: Emergency personnel and investigators gather outside the church after the shooting on Wednesday night